Everyone knows who Ed Helms is by this point. Whether it’s as an accomplished actor on TV shows – such as The Office, Rutherford Falls, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – or in movies – such as The Hangover, Vacation, We’re The Millers, Chappaquiddick, or Together Together. In addition to all that, he’s also an accomplished bluegrass musician.
But one thing that most people may not be aware of is just what a history buff he is. Now he’s showcasing that side of him in a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts called SNAFU. Hosted by helms, SNAFU is described as being a new comedy series that will “dissect some of history’s greatest screw-ups.”
There will be a new topic explored each season. And this first season is taking a look at Able Archer 83. Able Archer 83 is something that so few people know about, deliberately. But in 1983, there was a “NATO military exercise that almost caused a real nuclear war in November of 1983… or did it?”. The podcast gets into all of that in a fascinating – and horribly frightening – story that gets even crazier the more you listen to it.
We recently spoke to Helms about the new podcast, some of his favorite discoveries from learning about Able Archer, the connection to the movie War Games, the unfortunate cancellation of Rutherford Falls, and his thoughts on Trevor Noah leaving The Daily Show.
Tell me a little bit about how it all came together.
Sure. I’ve been really enjoying the podcast space a lot as a consumer. And at a certain point, I just started wondering “I wonder if I fit in here somewhere.” There’s no shortage of interview shows with celebrities talking to other celebrities. I really enjoy those, but I felt like I wanted to do something a little more unique.
So we just started looking around. And our good friends at Film Nation had a podcast arm of their company up and running. And we were just discussing some of our interests. I’ve always been something of a history nerd. And they were like “Well, there’s this story that’s really fascinating.” We just started to get into it. And it just became clear that “This is it. This is what we want to zero in on.”
It’s such a crazy story. Very few people know about it still, which is mind blowing. It just felt really exciting. And honestly it’s been an absolute blast to work on. Every aspect of it. Just learning more about this story. The creative process of working on content for these episodes, collaborating with some amazing producers and sound engineers and sound designers. It’s just been a really creatively gratifying experiencing.
So prior to this, you had never heard the story about Able Archer??
No! I had never heard of it at all before it came up in this context. My interest in history has typically been not so recent. More kind of earlier American history. So the Cold War is something that… I lived through it, obviously, but I didn’t know a ton about the geopolitics of the Cold War. So that was a really gratifying thing to dig into.
This story was kept secret very deliberately for a very long time. And it was only through the diligent work of a few amazing historians that we even know this story.
It really is a crazy story. Without spoiling the rest of the episodes, what were some of your favorite discoveries with doing this series?
Yeah, I don’t want to throw out any spoilers. But I think the psychology of it is so fascinating.
There’s this great expression I love called The Road to Abilene. It refers to a family in Texas – and this is just an apocryphal story but it’s where the expression comes from – who is trying to figure out where to go to dinner. And someone says “Oh, there’s a great restaurant in Abilene, but it’s an hour away. But I know you like barbecue, so maybe we can go there.” So they’re making this suggestion not for themselves but for someone else. The other person heard the suggestion and thinks “Oh, I wonder if they really wanna go there. So even though I don’t wanna go there, I’ll agree to it because I think they wanna go there.”
So what winds up happening is a group of people makes a decision to do something that none of them wants to do. And this happens all the time in all kinds of social settings. Or even organizational, professional settings. Let alone government settings, right? Congress. So this just felt like one of the most extreme examples of this thing that nobody wants, a nuclear war, getting stumbled into almost in spite of everyone’s best efforts and best intentions.
That’s wild. And the psychology behind that – the psychology that’s kind of floating in the various perspectives and lack of perspective – is really fascinating. And I think warrants a lot of attention and exploration.
And you kick off the podcast by tying this event in with pop culture, by talking to Matthew Broderick about War Games. Where did that idea come from?
Well, it’s just a staggering coincidence that the story of that movie is so on point with what actually happened. And that it happened just a few months apart. The movie came out and then Able Archer happened just a few months later. That coincidence is just mind blowing. It was really fun to talk to Matthew – not just because he’s a phenomenal guy – because he had never heard the story of Abel Archer.
It’s just such a great example of how secret the story was, if somebody working on a narrative in a major Hollywood production that is almost identical, that no one has ever brought it up to him before.
That’s so fascinating. It really is. And so do you have an idea for the podcast beyond season one? Like what you may want to do with it next?
Oh absolutely. The SNAFU team is very excited about a number of possibilities. And it kind of goes without saying, there is no shortage of major historical snafus to pick from. (Laughs). This one in particular is fun because so few people know about. But I think even ones where people think they know about it, there’s always a level of detail that can be really exciting to learn about.
So there are lots of exciting possibilities. And yeah, we’ve been talking about that for a while.
I’m so glad to hear that. I’ve got two more questions I want to jump around a bit for. I was also a big fan of Rutherford Falls and I was so sad that it didn’t get picked up for a third season.
You and me both.
I can imagine! Were there already plans in place for what you guys wanted to do for a third season?
We had so many idea. There was so much passion in that writers room to tell these stories. I think with any great show, you kind of try to write yourself into a corner at the end of a season so that when you get into a room to write the next season, you have to figure out a lot of stuff. So we definitely laid some traps for ourselves at the end of season two that we were all really excited to figure out how to handle.
But beyond that, there are just so many stories. Native American experiences and character experiences and jokes. We just had a huge bucket of ideas that will never see the light of day, sadly.
It’s such a shame. I really enjoyed the show. Now the last thing I wanna ask is a few weeks ago, Trevor Noah announced that he’s stepping down from The Daily Show. And of course everyone is looking to the correspondents now as possible replacements. As that’s where you got your start, I’m curious what do you think it takes to host that show? And are there any current correspondents that you could see fitting into that role?
It’s a really tough job, and it does have a lot of requirements. I think one of the most important things is really genuine intellectual curiosity. Both Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah had that in spades. And it means that when you have an author on, you read the book. And when you have an expert on, you do the research on them before hand. And when you have a genuine intellectual curiosity, it just means that you’re going to have meaty interviews.
And of course, you have to have an amazing, spontaneous sense of humor that’s kind of the dressing on top of those meaty interviews. There are incredibly funny people that don’t have a mind for satire, and that’s the other thing that it takes. A really wickedly smart brain for satire. And then just an effortless charm. That may be the hardest thing. Just having an effortless charm that allows you to get away with stuff like that.
They are very big shoes to fill. I would not hazard a guess as to who might fill it at this point. But obviously there’s Jon – who I worked closely with and adore. And then Trevor, who I think has done a tremendous job. I really think he has carried the mantle amazingly well, and even elevated it in some ways that are particular to him. I’m sad to see him go, but I’m very excited to see who jumps in.
Absolutely. It’ll be interesting to see the new direction it takes. But of course that show seems to be built to always stand the rest of time, I think.
It’s become something of an institution. And it’s a damn good one. It’s one that we need.